


How Rodney McKay Got His Dogtags (And, Perhaps, a Little Bit of Mojo)

by Anonymous



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen, Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-10
Updated: 2009-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-02 07:30:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn't supposed to happen like that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Rodney McKay Got His Dogtags (And, Perhaps, a Little Bit of Mojo)

**Author's Note:**

> [This](http://cesperanza.livejournal.com/138225.html) is [Speranza](http://www.trickster.org/speranza)'s fault. The story, however, I must take ~~credit~~ blame for, despite all of [Ceria](http://ceria.insanejournal.com) and [Melle](http://melle.livejournal.com)'s betaing efforts.

It wasn't supposed to happen like that.

The whole Atlantis expedition wasn't supposed to happen, but it did, and Rodney supposed he really should have learned from his first week in the city—hell, the first day—that nothing was ever going to go as expected ever again. But even the smartest man in two galaxies can't be expected to draw such extreme conclusions from such meager data, and he felt he should be cut a little slack.

"Even Homer nods!" he insisted to Teyla, when she looked politely skeptical.

"Excuse me?" The skepticism had transformed into the kind of confusion that must have felt wearyingly familiar to her.

He sighed, and started to explain, gesturing. "Homer, he was a poet, a bard, what have you, thousands of years ago—"

"One of the Ancestors?" she asked.

Ford chuckled. "S'pose he could've been," he said, deliberately infuriating. "You said yourself, Doc, that the Greeks got the story of Atlantis from the Ancients."

"Yes, well, it's possible," he admitted. "But unlikely. My _point_ is, he wrote these poems, and they're thousands of lines long and complex, and they're pretty amazing, but there are points in them where the action flags, or there are logical inconsistencies, whatever. Even Homer nods."

"I see," Teyla said. "My people have a similar saying."

Of course they did, and the discussion devolved into Teyla's (far less concise) explanation of her people. When she and Ford got up, she squeezed Rodney's shoulder before leaning in to press her forehead to his. Ford grinned and yanked the bill of his baseball cap down his forehead, before he said, "You know, Doc, seems to me you're the guy that keeps saving our collective ass. My people have a saying, too—adapt and overcome. You've been doing real well at that."

"Your people?" he blurted.

"Marines, sir." Well. Yes, he'd admitted when the infirmary was quiet once more, he'd been performing at a level he'd never expected of himself, doing things he would have thought were so far outside his abilities as to be in another dimension (not galaxy, dimension), and perhaps Ford was not entirely brain-damaged from basic.

But he held to his main point: that it was not supposed to happen like that.

Because he was not supposed to be in the field, damnit, he was not supposed to be on an off-world team, he was not supposed to be wearing a holster in some very uncomfortable places, and clearly Homer had been nodding when Rodney Ingram McKay said _yes_ to Major Sheppard's offer.

Which hadn't been supposed to happen at all, much less like that. Major Sheppard had slouched in, as though one of the security-cleared common areas was Bethlehem, bobbing his head at the occupants in a genial, abstract way, mumbled something vaguely amusing to the anthropologist near the door, flapped his hand at the Marines, and draped himself over the chair by Rodney.

"What?" Rodney asked, not looking up from his laptop.

Sheppard blinked. "Hi?" he said.

"Oh, please, Major, spare me. You couldn't be more obvious that you want something if you had on a neon _sign_! What. Do. You. Want?—At least," he added after pausing long enough to reject fourteen of the more obvious possibilities as too stupid for Sheppard to ask him, "you came to me and not the chuckleheads who allegedly got their degrees from respectable institutions, although if I had to guess I'd say ezdegrees.com as a more probable source, and since I've already told that I don't have any of the blueprints for the puddlejumpers—_puddlejumpers_, really, Major—it had better be something else, preferably something _not_ triple-encoded in this damned database, because the linguists are translating _gobbledygook_, and what is it already?"

Everyone in Atlantis was already used to his outbursts, and ignored him—which ordinarily would have been annoying, but since it meant no one in the room paid attention to the slowly growing grin on half of Sheppard's mouth, he didn't mind so much. "Jesus, McKay," he said, "do you even need oxygen?"

Rodney almost blushed, but managed to turn it into a glare.

"All right, all right," Sheppard said, and wiggled a little in the supremely uncomfortable chair. Had the Ancients never heard of ergonomics? How was he to stay up all night and come up with unspeakably brilliant solutions to the most complicated problems the city and her idiotic, mouth-breathing inhabitants could throw at him, if he was contending with constant lower back pain? "I have a question."

Rodney tapped on the laptop keyboard. "I knew that already."

Sheppard sighed. "It's not like I need an answer right away, okay," he began.

"I have utmost faith in my ability to—mmmfph." Sheppard's palm was warm and dry, with a single raised scar bisecting the skin. What had he tried to do, grab a knife?

He took his palm off Rodney's mouth a moment later. It was, Rodney realized, the first time Sheppard had actually touched him; the punch he'd thrown when they were testing the personal shield didn't count because—well, _personal shield_. "Note to self," Sheppard muttered, "subtle is not the way to go with McKay. Okay. Shut up, McKay," he said when Rodney opened his mouth to say something, although he wasn't sure what. "You know what? I don't have a question. You're on my off-world team. Do you have any questions?" He grinned, one corner of his mouth lifting and twisting, and Rodney could only splutter.

"Physicist! Allergies!" He poked a finger toward where Sheppard's gun hung low on his hip. "I don't _do_ guns, Major!"

"So no questions? Cool," Sheppard said, and unfolded himself from the chair. "See you later, McKay."

"No—Major, what the _hell_?"

But Sheppard was gone, and Rodney didn't bother chasing after him in any sort of undignified fashion, turning his attention to more worthy causes, like his laptop, which was now insisting that the answer to the translation decryption algorithm was a series of yellow triangles, with smiley faces on them.

That was definitely not supposed to happen, and he began picking apart the integrated variables.

Somehow, three days later, he found himself stepping through the 'gate, to the same address where Colonel Sumner had died. While he knew perfectly well that neither citrus, horse dander, nor bee stings had caused Sumner's death, it wasn't very comforting because Sumner _had not been allergic_ to citrus, horse dander, or bee stings. Rodney was.

There was greenery on the world. Lots of it. Underbrush, and trees, and flowers, and all of them had leaves and pollen and were potential sources of death. Painful death.

Rodney bitched the whole way trekking through the forest, until Sheppard snapped, "Don't make me regret talking Dr. Weir into letting you go off-world, McKay," and then surprised himself by shutting up. He didn't want Sheppard to regret it, he realized dumbly, and then the trees (not quite conifers, but definitely not deciduous, either) opened up on a gaping crater and he stopped thinking about Sheppard in favor of the overwhelming sensation of _oh my god._

The _oh my god_ never really went away after that.

First had been The Bug, then Ford came back through the 'gate with a lump on the back of his head and blown pupils, and then Teyla had an arrow sticking out of her blood-filled boot, and then.

And then.

Rodney's thoughts always stuttered to a halt there, because as used as he was to non-rational numbers and turning the square root of negative one into sense and rewriting the laws of physics in general, he had absolutely no way to think about—to think about—this.

He hadn't even protested when Carson had stuck two needles in his left arm. He had been caught in a daze. It was one thing to be convinced that the world was out to kill him (citrus, horse dander, bees, and those were only the major allergies), it was quite another to have someone point a weapon at him—at _him_—and release a projectile. He was used to living in a world that was full of threats, even accustomed to people refusing to believe that his life was a succession of narrowly-avoided death-traps, but to have the universe's ire suddenly turned from casual, indifferent hostility to personal viciousness was a new experience.

"You okay?" Sheppard asked from the next gurney over, where one of the nurses was taping up the scrapes on his left shoulder.

He nodded vaguely. "That wasn't supposed to happen, was it?" he asked.

"Jesus, McKay," Sheppard said. "_No_, that wasn't supposed to happen. You were at the briefing! We were supposed to make contact with the, the whatever their name is. And I don't try to get my team killed, for God's sake."

"Oh," he said, and Carson went away with what felt like half the fluid in his pulmonary system, and he shut his eyes and slipped into darkness.

Which he was definitely not supposed to do, what with the concussion, but it was Carson's fault anyway, not paying sufficient attention to the most valuable member of the expedition.

They had gone through the gate to a sub-tropical world, one that Teyla knew only by reputation—apparently they had some sort of intoxicant, and since the Athosians made their own version of mead, they had never felt the need to trade with the Capasadenal. Carson had wanted to examine the chemical make-up of the intoxicant (they had already hit the third time that one of the off-world teams had been subjected to a trust ritual that involved some local drug, and there were three botanists frantically trying to catalogue the local galaxy's flora in terms of Earth analogues—not, perhaps, the most scientifically rigorous idea, but damned more useful than phylum and the like), and Sheppard had sighed and said, "Fine, we'll do it this time," and off they went, merrily through the gate, blithe and unconcerned and _stupid_.

Which was not supposed to happen; Rodney knew, without a shred of arrogance, that he was one of the best examples of why humans had named themselves Homo sapiens, thinking man, in the history of, well, ever. He was not supposed to do stupid things like walk onto strange planets where, oh yes, the inhabitants were crazy and dangerous, and especially not without arguing about how stupid an idea it was.

But he had.

The Capasadenal turned out to be so looped on their own drug that they thought Sheppard and Ford and Teyla and Rodney were gods. And, okay, Sheppard did look good all damp from humidity, and Ford's skin was the color of copper and gold alloy, and Teyla had the mysterious smile and shadowed eyes of the statues Rodney had always ignored in museums on class trips, but Rodney was never one for delusions, even about himself. (And if he had, Sam Carter would have demolished all of them when she made her position on the extinction of the human race very clear: preferable to sex with him.)

Being worshipped was a new experience for Rodney—for all of them—and one he didn't feel the need to repeat. It turned out that it was _embarrassing_ to have people genuflecting for no obvious reason, and that if he was going to have minions and groupies and followers, he wanted it to be because of his genius, his brilliance, and possibly his Nobels, not because they were whacked-out on chemicals so strong they ate through the sample containers.

That wasn't supposed to be his reaction, and he filed that little revelation away in a drawer marked 'to be examined later' and paid more attention to Sheppard's embarrassment than his own. There was no question that the man was handling it better than he himself was, no question at all; but he was equally freaked out. The whites of his eyes showed all the way around his irises before he snugged his sunglasses tight against his cheekbones, and there was a muscle in his jaw that was twitching, as steadily as the underbeat in Beethoven's Second Concerto.

That made Rodney feel a little better, and that wasn't supposed to happen either. He was supposed to be having a nervous breakdown because there were crazy people wearing skirts made out of purple grass trying to feed him something that could very well have citrus in it, but when Sheppard looked at him, clearly trying to tamp down the panic of someone with kind of appallingly large breasts approaching him, he felt the coil of _oh shit_ behind his ribs relax slightly.

"If we're gods," he said, when they had been left alone in the temple, all of them staring mutely at each other in horror for a long moment, "then I think we should cancel today."

Ford nodded frantically, and Sheppard's mouth relaxed from its grim line. Even Teyla let out a huff of breath. "Major, I do not know why they have decided—"

"Religion makes people crazy," Sheppard said firmly. "This is no one's fault. Although I wish we had our guns." They had been disarmed in the ceremony that had led to the priestesses declaring them the returned ones, who had some jaw-breaking name that Rodney hadn't bothered to remember.

He rubbed his face, surprised to find himself agreeing with Sheppard, which wasn't the way the universe was supposed to work: the weight of a nine-millimeter on his thigh would have been immensely comforting. It was an appalling thought. "Did you turn anything on, Major?" he asked. "Couldn't these idiots worship the Ancients and think we're—"

Sheppard shook his head. "I didn't touch anything, McKay," he said, sounding irritated. "I know better than that. And besides, that would just be me, and maybe you, right? Teyla and Ford don't have the gene."

"Right, right," Rodney agreed, getting up to pace. "It doesn't matter, I suppose, not when we can't disabuse the local mouthbreathers of their lunatic notion and get the hell away from here. What we need is not an explanation but a plan." He flopped onto one of the padded benches that lined the walls. "Not my department. Wake me up if there's anything I need to pay attention to." He shut his eyes, wishing he'd been able to figure out how to turn himself into a robot, the way he had been trying when he was seven, because an audible click would have been nice when his eyelids fell shut.

Sheppard did come up with a plan, although Rodney didn't think it was a good one since it seemed to be summed up by 'climb out this teeny window and then run like hell'. It was one of those times when he really would have liked to be wrong. Which was not supposed to happen; he was supposed to take great, vocal glee in being gloriously, gloriously right at every opportunity.

There were arrows, and spears, and mud, and grass stains on his knees, and his hip, and he was going to have an oyster-curve of five little bruises on his bicep from where Sheppard had thrown him behind a rock outcropping (at which point, he stumbled, tripped, and ripped the hell out of his uniform's knees), and then there had been a sharp sting in his neck, and his temple began to throb, and then it was all sparkling, glittering darkness.

It was after that time that Sheppard found him. He opened the door to Rodney's quarters, overriding the privacy lock with no more thought than _please_—which wasn't supposed to happen, but Atlantis was such a slut for a natural gene—and the shadows under his eyes were the same color as the bruises his shirt (a fresh one, no blood, no rips, no dirt ground into the seams) hid. His left hand was clenched in a fist, and then he turned the palm upwards and uncurled his fingers slowly.

There was a chain and two flat discs of metal in his hand. Dogtags.

"Wear them, McKay," Sheppard said, and Rodney had never heard him say his name like that. Like Rodney was really one of his. Possessive.

He nodded dumbly and slipped the chain over his head, the twinge in his shoulder reminding him of why Sheppard had brought him these in the first place.

It wasn't until Sheppard left, a moment later, that he exhaled. He lifted the chain on one fingertip and looked at the name scratched into the metal. His name. On dogtags.

Of all the things that weren't supposed to have happened, that was at the top of the list. He was supposed to stay (loudly) in his lab, being brilliant, leaving a breadcrumb trail of knowledge so that the rest of the human race could follow in his footsteps. He wasn't supposed to be struck speechless by an Air Force officer with funny-colored eyes and a scarred palm. And he wasn't supposed to walk around with two metal discs resting below the hollow of his throat reminding him of how fragile the vessel of the body was; he knew that.

They weren't supposed to be comforting, he suspected, but they'd become so almost as soon as Sheppard handed them to him. They were a steady weight against his sternum, a counterbalance to the throbbing of his heart whenever adrenaline kicked through his body, and that was happening far more often than it was supposed to. Except that it was becoming the norm to almost die, and to think _at least they'll be able to identify my broken corpse_, and then to have Sheppard crook a half-smile at him when he woke up.

The next time Sheppard told him to shut the hell up and stay down, he did. He followed Sheppard's orders, and he followed Sheppard when Sheppard took point, and he never took the dogtags off; he was, after all, fatally allergic to citrus, horse dander, and bees. You never knew what you were going to encounter in the Pegasus Galaxy; nothing ever went the way it was supposed to.


End file.
